


Fate

by cat_77



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: He had been foolish to think a quiet day would stay that way, not with the Whitly’s involved.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	Fate

**Author's Note:**

> For the “torture” entry at hc_bingo.
> 
> * * *

“Brittney Martinelli.” 

The name was proclaimed as though it should mean something. Gil tried but did not understand the reference. Not from any case he worked. Not from the missing persons files he had kept an eye on since his rookie days of walking a beat. Not from the long list of murder victims associated with the family currently standing before him.

“I’m sorry, but I do not know who that is,” Jessica Whitly said with a surprising amount of calm. There were cracks in that façade though, when she eyed the person in a crumpled heap at the man’s feet.

His eyes flickered to that person despite his best efforts. Yet another way he didn’t make the grade on this one, he supposed.

“Of course you don’t,” the man spat. His hand wavered, just barely, just for a fraction of a second. It was the largest opening they had been gifted with since this whole fiasco began, but it was still not enough. No one was willing to take the shot at that range. Everyone knew what was at stake.

Three hours ago, Gil came into work on an oddly quiet day. He knew it wouldn’t last that way for long, and Fate proved him right. The reason for the quiet was a certain profiler had not yet arrived. There was no questioning, begging for a case to work even a cold one. There was no inappropriate commentary about the crime rate of the area statistically proving one was going to happen sooner or later, and it would be of the degree that required his team’s skillset. He had assumed that said profiler was having brunch with his mother again and would barrel in sometime later.

He had assumed incorrectly.

Forty-five minutes ago, he received a frantic call from one Jessica Whitly claiming an envelope had been couriered to her residence. That envelope had contained only two items: a blue floral silk tie spattered with blood that matched the one her son had worn just the day before, and a letter that said only, “Meet me where you always run to.”

She came to the station in hopes of unravelling the meaning behind the letter but it turned out there was no need. She had barely crossed the threshold into his office, a forensics team on standby, when they received word of a commotion out front of the station as a whole. He issued an apology and told her to stay there and she of course followed anyway as a mother’s instincts were apparently spot on.

On the sidewalk at the foot of the short set of steps stood a man in a cliched facemask and what appeared to be some sort of mechanic’s coveralls with the name of wherever they had originated torn off. He was of bulky, above average build and Caucasian from what Gil could see of the little skin exposed. In his right hand, he held a pistol. With his left, he held one Malcolm Bright, looking a lot worse for wear. He had been stripped of his suit coat and vest and they already knew where his coordinating tie had ended up. His white dress shirt was as rumpled as he was and liberally dotted with red. His hands were bound behind him and his head drooped too far forward for Gil to assess any further damage despite his assumption that there was definitely more that could be seen at first glance.

The man had demanded Jessica come to him and, despite at least three people’s attempts to stand in her way, she strode forward with a curt, “You will let me pass.”

Which is how they came to be at the present moment. He stood as close to her as he dared, ready to tackle her to the ground if needed, thousand-dollar shoes be damned. Dani had stepped up on her other side, either to do the same or to catch her when Gil dropped her. Around them was a phalanx of available officers. Out in the street the first news van arrived.

Though his back was to the arrival, he must have read something in Jessica’s expression. “I had been hoping that lovely daughter of yours would be first on the scene. You could have a family reunion. One mine will never have again because of what yours did.”

Martin. It always circled back to The Surgeon and his victims, both those who had been in his grasp and the loved ones that had suffered all the more for it.

“There was no one by the name of Martinelli amongst the known victims of Martin Whitly,” Jessica announced. She held her head high, annunciated loud enough for the gathered crowd to hear her clearly.

The man sneered behind his mask. “Can you be so sure of that?”

Jessica’s response was to recite all twenty-three names in chronological order, including their calculated dates of death. Malcolm had told him once that he had found a small journal tucked into her bedside table. Inside was precisely that information including the cause of death. It wasn’t a trophy, but a self-prescribed penance. When asked, she told her son that she may not have caught Martin, may not have suspected anything about what he had done right under her nose, but she damned well could remember the victims, and that was her price to pay for her role.

Just as Martin had tortured his victims, his family tortured themselves for not having been able to save the same. Years later, and there was no convincing them otherwise.

The masked man had paused at that, head cocked slightly to the side as he let her read off the data. He recovered to jerk his gun against Bright’s temple. “This one wouldn’t even tell me that much, no matter what I did to try to get it out of him. You can take your fake commiseration and shove it. I doubt you’d bother with it if the cameras weren’t on you right now.”

Gil forced himself to look away from the man and more thoroughly assess Bright for a moment. He allowed himself a twenty-count, no more, and knew Dani and the others would cover for him if required. He saw it now, the slices in the fabric, the rivulets of dark that flowed down the tailored gray fabric and onto the sidewalk. He truly wanted the kid to lift his head, to let him see his face so that he could convince himself that he was okay even though he knew he wasn’t.

“ _This one_ was a child when it happened. _This one_ is the one who turned my monster of a husband in for what he had done,” Jessica growled, letting some of her true anger shine through. “And he didn’t tell you anything because he was trained by the FBI to do precisely that: not to break.”

Gil knew the woman beside him played as much if not more of a role than the FBI in making sure Malcolm knew how to stand his ground, but kept silent on that fact. Instead, he listened as the man ranted, “Turned him in to the very person next to you now. How many times have you run to the welcoming arms of the NYPD? How many times have they covered your family’s dirty little tracks?”

The first flashes of the cameras punctuated his words and Gil had the feeling they just made the front-page news. The way the man smiled at the reflections told him that had been the plan all along.

“When?”

It took Gil a second to realize the question had come from the heap in the bloodied remnants of a suit. The voice was strained, but still strong, and spoke well of him surviving this so long as nothing worse played out in the next few minutes.

The gunman dared to glance down at him. “When? You want me to list the times you’ve run to the police? She’s literally here now. You even work for them, don’t you?”

Bright shook his head and Gil finally caught a glimpse of his face. Swollen eye and busted lip and a thin trail of dried blood that began at his left eyebrow. He’d been better but, as his adventures with John Watkins attested to, he had definitely been worse.

“Brittney Martinelli. When do you believe she died?” Malcolm asked.

He received a kick to the ribs for his words and a curt, “How dare you speak her name!”

Bright managed to not topple over, which meant they still had an obstructed view and no clear shot. He wheezed as he recovered, and then immediately went into his usual mode of ignoring his own wellbeing to complete a profile. “Isn’t that what this is about? To get her name out there? To have it known what happened to her?” he asked. Then, of course, he had to get cocky and add, “But you don’t know the truth yourself, do you? You are looking for answers. You have jumped to a conclusion that may or may not be correct, but we won’t know for certain, not yet. So, I am asking you, when do you believe your daughter died?”

The man was thrown for a loop. “I never said she was…”

“It’s personal. You are targeting the family of The Surgeon the way you believe your own was targeted,” Malcolm explained. “You want to take from him what was taken from you. But you also need answers. We’d be more than happy to review what data you have so that we might be able to provide those answers but, to do so, we need a date. You gave us a name. Please, give us a date.”

Gil watched as the man debated which was more important, his need for closure or his need for revenge. He still held a gun on Bright, barrel pressed against his temple again, which meant there was a chance he was hoping for both.

“Brittney Martinelli went missing August 18th, 1997. She was seventeen. There was no note, no reason for her to have run away. She had good grades and was dating the quarterback and had a family that loved her. She was on a class trip to the Met. She left in the morning and never returned,” the man finally allowed. The pain and grief in his voice was obvious, as were Jessica and Malcolm’s own reactions.

Jessica started to take a hesitant step forward, but was stopped by Dani. “I am sorry that your daughter is missing, and has been missing for so long, but that was not my husband,” Jessica told him, not unkindly.

“You expect me to believe you?” The man hauled Bright more upright, let her see as much of him as she could from where she was. “He took my family away. She was all we had and he took her away!”

“It wasn’t him!” Bright insisted, his words echoed by his mother.

She took a breath that did precisely nothing to calm anyone and said, “On August 18th, 1997, my husband was in Cherry Hill headlining a conference on thoracic surgery. He remained there for four days and he carried out the murders of Elsie Warnicker and Violet Chansey where he demonstrated his skills by performing a dual heart transplant in the basement of the neighboring hotel on August 20th. It is believed they were conscious for the majority of the procedure.”

The man laughed in disbelief. “Your alibi for why your husband didn’t kill my daughter is that he was busy killing two other girls? Why should I believe you?” he demanded.

“Because it’s quantitative data that can be independently verified,” Bright offered with a grunt as he tried to steady himself. “The conference schedule and location are how those murders were tied to him.”

“Lies! You are lying!” the man exclaimed. “What did I expect from a family of a criminal like-”

He never got to finish his sentence. In his rage, he had thrown Bright forward with quite a bit of force and taken a step back, gun in the air as he waved his hands and screamed. JT took the shot he had been waiting for ever since he circled around at the very beginning of the tableau and tased him, filling him with enough current to knock him to the ground.

There was a swarm of action at that. Officers disbursed throughout the gathered crowd formed a wall around the steps to the precinct to allow the man to be fully disarmed and cuffed. Ainsley broke right through that wall and rushed to her mother who was already trying to break free of Dani’s hold and rush to her son. Gil beat her to it, but just barely.

Bright had managed to roll slightly as he toppled and his shoulder took the brunt of it versus his already damaged face. Gil sliced through the multiple layers of zip ties around the kid’s wrists with the help of a knife offered to him by Anderson, who usually barely tolerated Bright on a good day. It was then he saw the damage to his hands, purpled from lack of circulation and abraded from the ties, with at least three fingernails completely missing and another only half attached. Painful, but survivable. With that in mind, he eased him to his back and tried to find what other hidden treasures awaited, but could only see the gash to his thigh and a handful of scrapes and bruises elsewhere.

“Just the leg,” Bright insisted. He moved to try to sit up, but was stopped by multiple sets of hands, some gentle and some belonging to Ainsley who bodily pushed him and looked ready to sit on top of him if needed.

“It’s more than just the leg and you know it,” she told him cuttingly. “And don’t even try to say you’re fine. You’re bleeding all over my new Burberry and there’s no manicurist in the world that can salvage those hands for weeks if not months.”

Gil’s lips twitched of their own accord at the version of sisterly love, but did make her release one of the damaged fingers when she grabbed it for a closer look and received a pained, “Ains!” for her troubles.

“Bus is on its way, boss,” Dani informed him over the reunion. “It’s just trying to get through the crowd.”

He could hear it, the high-pitched and high-volume wail of a siren, but drowned it out for now, especially when he heard Jessica say, “Should we see if they have your usual room ready, dear?”

Dani snorted at that, and looked embarrassed save for the fact Ainsley had joined her in the action. “At least you know it’ll be a place that has the Jell-O you like?” she offered instead.

Gil just shook his head and helped Jessica back up from where she had crouched on her ridiculous heels with nary a wobble. Her hand shook in his though, just barely, and he knew it was a sign of just how much the whole debacle had affected her despite her refusal to show anything more to the world. He had no doubt that she would spearhead an investigation into the disappearance of Brittney Martinelli herself, and probably request reduced sentencing for the distraught parent currently being led away in cuffs.

It had been a quiet morning. That morning had led to a frantic afternoon. He had the feeling the evening that lay before him would be less than silent as well, especially with the way the siblings before him were already bickering about everything from hospital duration to dry cleaning bills. He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve the Whitly family in his life, but took solace that the rest of his team had been dragged along for the ride as well when Jessica started planning a dinner for six at her place later that evening, seven if JT wished to bring along his lovely wife. Somewhere between the soup and salad courses, he decided it was best not to question Fate’s plan.


End file.
